“What I’m saying is someone shoved your head into the cabinet. Someone was here, and they attacked you.”

Silence, again. But this time, it was shock overwhelming them. Cheng Xiao had been struck especially hard by the words. She had been ATTACKED. Inside her own house. And she didn’t remember the slightest thing about the person who did it, what they did, or how they did it. Had the person simply intended to rob her house? Had they specifically targeted her? Did they know she was going to be away? How did they get in? Who would do something like that?

Without even realizing, she was staring straight at the floor, with her eyes wide and her face ghostly pale, Eunseo and Bona holding each of her arms. The floor seemed to be trying to move in front of her feet… to spin. The walls seemed like they wanted to become the floor and the floor become the walls. She was dizzy, nauseated with the idea that in this very house, she had been assaulted, her belongings stolen, with all of her personal information and possibly, valuable information on her company. Finally, she saw the reason Bona was so concerned from the start. This was serious, and this might have been premeditated.

She was feeling sick to her stomach, genuine discomfort about being inside that place. She just wanted to leave, to move. To find out who did it and what had happened. To know that her company was safe. When she was able to return to her senses in the slightest, she had already been lead to sit on the couch. But no, she didn’t want to sit there. It had been moved. In the middle of this said fight.

She bolted up, and when she looked around, both the officers, her neighbor, and her assistant had their faces painted in all shades of worried and panicked. Bona had her phone on her hand.

Finally, when she was able to recover her perception of sounds, she noticed all of them were loudly and repeatedly calling for her, and it was making it so much worse.

“Please… stop… talking… Please.” Cheng Xiao’s hands were on either side of her head, covering her ears.

Everyone instantly stopped making a sound.

“It’s alright. I was a little dizzy. Please don’t worry. I’m fine now.” She lowered her hands from her head and looked each of them in the eye, to try to be more convincing.

Nobody seemed to be convinced though, as they all exchanged concerned looks between one another.

“You… don’t want to go… to the Hospital?” Eunseo started, facing her lap. “Doctor Nam did say…”

“Nope! Really. See! I’m suuuuper fine.” Cheng Xiao forced a smile as hard as she could, raising both her hands in peace signs.

She couldn’t fool anyone. But she did appear to feel at least a little bit better, even if only physically.

 “There is something else we need to discuss, though. Is it okay to continue to talk about this right now?” Dayoung respectfully asked.

After an affirmative answer, Exy followed up.

“You see… there are no signs of your lock having been violated. It’s also quite difficult for someone to break in from a window on the 13^th floor, but even if they did, there are also no signs of any of your windows having been broken or forced. Whoever did this had a key to your apartment.”

Cheng Xiao faced down again and nodded very lightly.

“Do you have any spare keys anywhere? Who else besides the three of you had in their possession the keys to this flat yesterday?”

“I gave Eunseo the spare key. Bona unnie also has a key. There’s nobody else that I can remember. Bona, do you know who else I might have given a key to?”

“No, I’m pretty sure I’m the only one aside from you who has one.”

Exy and Dayoung nodded at each other.

“Very well. We will need to know where the both of you were yesterday, all afternoon, when it’s assumed the incident took place, according to what we know right now. We will also need information on people or entities that can confirm your whereabouts.” Exy’s gaze was deadly serious, almost accusatory.

Eunseo frowned slightly, confused. Bona was nearly offended.

“Are you serious, Sojung? You’re suspecting me?! I called you here in the first place. Why would I do that if I was guilty?!” The blonde’s face was all wrinkled, opened in indignation.

“What even?! This is standard procedure, and it needs to be documented for investigation purposes. It’s my job to ask these questions. Besides, it doesn’t have anything to do with me thinking you’re guilty or not. The location of all the copies of the keys to this apartment is of extreme relevance in this case, regardless of who carried them.” The sternness in Exy’s voice didn’t falter.

“We know this must be a stressful situation, but we ask you to remain calm in order to cooperate in the best way with our investigation. The sooner we can find out what happened, the better.” Dayoung added.

Bona dropped her head and sighed.

“Okay. I’m sorry. But anyway, like I said, after Xiao decided to turn back, I continued to the airport to catch the flight to China at 16:30. I was in China until this morning. My driver can confirm this.”

Exy nodded as she signaled Dayoung to take note of it in her tablet.

“What about you, Eunseo?”

“I went to a meeting at my publisher. It dragged on a bit, so as soon as I arrived, I simply got Cheng Xiao’s key from my house and immediately came here. I was worried I wouldn’t make it in the exact time she had told me to do the maintenance on the aquarium. Soobin, the doorkeeper, saw me at that time. You also have the building’s CCTV.”

“Very well. We’re going to need contact information on all of you, as we might need more of your collaboration throughout the investigation.”

After collecting said information, Cheng Xiao lead the agents towards the door.

“Thank you all for your cooperation. We promise we will do our best to come to a conclusion as soon as possible. Meanwhile, we wish you a very fast and successful recovery, Cheng Xiao.”

Exy paused to fake-whisper in her ear again.

“And if you would like to recover fast, I would stay away from this one. She’s going to make your head hurt so much worse.” She winked and pointed at Bona, making Cheng Xiao giggle in response.

 “You’ve been enough help already. GOODBYE.” Bona rolled her eyes and started opening the door to playfully push Exy out.

Little did she know, there was another woman standing in the direction she was pushing Exy to. The poor woman ended up taking the impact. Exy tripped on her, making both of them fall, landing awkwardly on top of her.

Bona’s face was stiff, trying to hold back her laughter, reaching to help the lady with long, shiny black hair stand. Dayoung hadn’t even tried to hold it, as she was laughing loudly and uncontrollably, obviously trying to mock her superior. Exy herself was holding a laugh behind her awkward smile.

Much to their surprise, the woman rejected Bona and Dayoung’s help, roughly pushed Exy off of her and smoothly brought herself to stand again.

“What’s wrong with you?!” The woman blurted out angrily, her thick eyebrows furrowed, looking between the three of them.

They all immediately stopped laughing. Or smiling.

Cheng Xiao and Eunseo couldn’t see properly from where they were standing, so both of them rushed to the front of the door as they heard the thump on the floor. As Eunseo noticed the woman in front of her, she froze in place, as stiff as a statue.

Eunseo just hoped she could hide from the woman’s sight again, but it was too late. She had been seen. As the black-haired woman locked eyes with her, shaped into the scariest passive-aggressive smile any of them had ever seen.

“Ah, Son Eunseo!!! Who knew I would find you here? And not your own flat? I’ve been ringing your bell for ages, and who would have guessed I’d been ringing at the wrong bell?! What a pleasant surprise this is! I was so worried that you weren’t answering your door, you know? Or my calls! How have you been, darling?”

Eunseo laughed nervously, her eyes twitching side to side, as the woman approached her.

“SeolA unnie… Haha… Great to see you…”

SeolA did not answer. She only intensified her terrifying smile, not breaking eye contact with Eunseo. Nobody dared to say anything. Even Bona felt uncomfortable in her presence, and it took a lot for her to feel that way.

Eunseo knew she was screwed. She dropped her head in defeat, slamming her forehead on the physical thing nearest to her, which happened to be Cheng Xiao’s shoulder. The shorter girl twitched slightly in surprise, but did not move away.

“Please kill me now.”

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A/N: So here's the second part of the events of the last chapter! I've been really trying not to drag the bureaucracies on too much, but there's just so many characters to introduce and so many technical details to handle. I hope you're not getting bored! Next chapter won't be focused on the incident anymore and we can finally move on to more interactions between characters and finding out more things about Cheng Xiao's past, so please look forward to it :) Thank you for continuously supporting this story, even with my lousy updating schedule!